Audio: Read by the author.

All night, my psyche comforts itself
with you. It delights in watching your body

travel through landscapes so lush even the bidet
is painted with twisting gouache flowers.

They frame a lady who rides an elephant,
while a gentleman stands holding up a lotus

toward her saddle. Then we are in a city, climbing
up a brownstone into the home of people you love.

I step behind you, smiling quietly into our bodies’
clement warmth. Except, instead of the usual deflecting

skirt, in my dream I’ve dressed you in mildly tailored
pants. Next, we are in a building, in a bazaar, in

a city inhabited by people subtle and endless
shades of a dark cinnamon. We walk through

room after room, then stop when we come
across two leather chairs with frames

carved from mangrove and mahogany.
The goatskin is dyed so red the color sprints

back and forth across that thin, thin line
between very elegant and exquisitely tacky.

We take both. Caramel and beige,
we are the whitest things around.

The shopkeepers greet us with a fondness
and familiarity that is also historical apology.

But we look back through our bodies completely
pleased by what—for millennia—the cell has seen

and done—and sustained. Something between us
refuses pity, because, of all the ancient masks

hanging from these walls, we are
the only two still walking and talking.